Education

[Thmom]

what makes some women research, read and investigate thier pregnancy and birth and others just sit back and assume that whatever thier doctor tells them is the best thing for them?

[Storm Bride]

I've never researched much. I never know where to start. So, I didn't do it when I got pregnant the first time, either.

Plus, I took the childbirth classes (hospital-based, but I didn't know there was a difference) and read...memorized...the provincial handbook on pregnancy and childbirth. I didn't research because I had no idea how much I didn't know. And, I know some women start digging when they get a diagnosis or a caution that they don't understand (eg. pre-e)...my first pregnancy was smooth as silk until the "emergency" section at the end. I never saw a reason to research.

Plus, the more I research, the more I realize that it all comes down to individual judgment calls and comfort zones. Maybe some women's comfort zone consists of believing that the expert across the desk really is an expert. They don't want to know that the doctor is only using his/her best judgment...and is probably factoring in things that we, as pregnant women, wouldn't be considering (eg. lawsuits).

[danav]

When I was younger (early 20s) and years from having my first baby, I knew only the mainstream thought process that you see an OB, have your baby in the hospital, and make sure you get that epidural. Sometime between then and when I got pg the first time, my sister became a childbirth educator and doula (she's now a midwife). She had 6 children of her own, having experienced everything from a natural birth to a C-section with HELLP syndrome.

When I started talking about TTC, she began to encourage me to look into natural birth and alternatives to traditional OB/hospital care. A visit to my regular gyn before I got pg inspired me to find an alternative, after she completely blew off my fertility charting as useless and told me I basically had no choice with regard to being separated from my baby after birth for "newborn care" in the nursery - that was an absolute deal-breaker for me and I refused to accept it.

When I did get pg, my sister told me she would be my doula but gave me an "assignment" and said I had to read Henci Goer's "The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth". That's how I started down the road I ended up on, and both of my babies were born in a free standing birth center. This one will either be born at that birth center, or possibly be a home birth.

I have good friends who were of the mindset during their pregnancies that the less the knew, the better - "ignorance is bliss", as one put it. I have friends who thoroughly enjoyed their medicated hospital births, saying their inductions and epidurals allowed them to relax and enjoy their births.

To each her own, I suppose!

[Storm Bride]

I can't even imagine taking an "ignorance is bliss" attitude towards it...

With ds1, I'd planned to stay home until contractions were 5 minutes apart, which I sort of did. Then, I was going to go to hospital. What would have happened there if things had been "okay", I'm not sure. In my ignorance, I assumed that my doctor would be there to help out if something went wrong, and I'd have my baby. As it turned out, I showed up with close, but irregular contractions, discovered my baby was breech and was sectioned...all in about half an hour.

[tinyshoes]

I read everything about labor and birth before I was TTC.

However, everything I read was from the BioMed library at the University of Minnesota, and so it was all OB textbooks, perinatology blib-blab, maternity nursing textbooks, etc.

I selected an OB, because every CNM needs an OB backup, so why not just get to know the OB in the first place, just in case?

After my elective induction featuring a crapola epidural, a second epidural placement, a brief 20 minute second-stage, and an episiotomy scar that ached for 6 months (ultimately for 13) , I started wondering, hey, maybe obstetrcially-managed births aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Furthermore, I was having a blissful time nursing my dd...and no one at my OB practice seemed to give a hoot about breastfeeding in general. Yet here it was, something my body was doing, something wonderful.

My aching crotch + my happy breasts = desire to learn about that strange "crunchy" world of natural childbirthers, and lo and behold, as a devotee to research, it became CRYSTAL CLEAR that noninterventive birth practices should be the rule, not the exception, for prenatal and intrapartum care for women. Case closed.

[Thmom]

I agree.. I can't imagine taking an ignorance is bliss attitude, I also can't imagine assuming the doctor knows everything, I can however understand not knowing that I don't know. Maybe I'm just the personality type that questions everything I don't know... but I was 20 and single when I was pg with #1 and I read everything. Childbirth without Fear, Natural Childbirth, Ina May's Guide and several of the papers Odent published.I tried to find a midwife and even a place to water birth (unfortunately I didn't have the internet) but I was well informed especially about common medical procedures and thier pros and cons. I refused all interventions at the hospital and had two really good hospital births before I discovered UC. I've learned alot since those births, but I don't think I would change a thing about either of them.
I don't think that every woman needs to make the same decsions, but I just don't understand why when even presented with a "maybe that's not the best thing" they wouldn't think about exploring it further, especially with so much information so easily available online.